Will Smith Is Back. Amazon Wrote Him A $70M Check To Prove It
Will Smith Is Back. Amazon Just Wrote Him A $70M Check To Prove It
- Amazon MGM's $70M deal for Will Smith's 'Supermax' shows industry's belief in his bankability as a leading man.
If you had any doubts about whether Will Smith was done in Hollywood, Amazon MGM Studios just answered that question loudly and in writing with a very large number attached. The Fresh Prince is back and the industry did not just crack the door open for his return. They blew it completely off the hinges. Find out which role Will Smith just committed to star in for $70 million.
As Deadline exclusively reported, Will Smith has committed to star in Supermax — a David Gordon Green-directed action-thriller about two FBI agents investigating a murder that takes place in the world’s most secure prison. Amazon MGM Studios closed the deal for worldwide rights in the $70 million range for the worldwide rights alone. This is before a single frame has been filmed. That is not a studio hedging its bets on a comeback. That is a studio making an unambiguous declaration that it believes Smith is still one of the most bankable stars on the planet.
The significance of this deal goes deeper than the number. This will mark Smith’s first non-franchise studio movie in recent years. The film is written by David Weil and David J. Rosen, who are known for their work on the TV series Hunters and Invasion. The film is being produced by The Picture Company partners Andrew Rona and Alex Heineman alongside Will Smith and Adam Fishbach for Smith’s Westbrook production company. In other words, this is not a sequel, not a spinoff and not a safe IP play. It is an original action-thriller built around Smith as the lead, which is a level of faith that studios do not extend to just anybody.
The director attached only adds to the credibility of the entire project. David Gordon Green is coming off a string of successful genre movies, including multiple installments in the Halloween franchise. Supermax will be his highest-budget film to date as a filmmaker, with Green most recently directing the Amazon TV series Scarpetta. Pairing a director who knows how to build tension and deliver on genre expectations with one of the most charismatic leading men in the history of Hollywood is either a stroke of genius or the most obvious decision imaginable, and honestly, it might be both.
Production is set to begin in mid-August, with additional casting underway, including a female part for Smith’s FBI partner. The film is expected to be a streaming play on Amazon rather than a theatrical release. For a project of this size and star power, bypassing theaters and going straight to the platform where Amazon can put it in front of every Prime subscriber on earth simultaneously is a flex of a different kind entirely.
As MovieWeb noted, the timing of this deal is deliberate and meaningful. Amazon swooped in ahead of the Cannes market to ensure the studio closed the deal before the project could be shopped internationally, signaling not just confidence in Smith specifically but also a competitive urgency to lock him in before anyone else could. That is not a charity move. Studios do not spend $70 million out of sentiment. They spend it because they believe the return on investment is real.
The only film Smith has appeared in over the past four years is Bad Boys: Ride or Die, which performed strongly at the box office two years after the Oscars incident. This is real data Amazon MGM could have looked at when deciding whether this bet was worth making. The audience showed up for Will Smith when given the opportunity. Amazon is betting they will do it again, and we are inclined to agree with that assessment entirely.
Welcome back, Big Willie. Hollywood clearly missed you.
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Will Smith Is Back. Amazon Just Wrote Him A $70M Check To Prove It was originally published on globalgrind.com
